Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Up until this point, I trusted him. For whatever reason, his keeping me alive for three years built a level of credence without me even realizing it. Now that level is being razed to the ground.
“If I catch you…” His lips are a tender reminder of all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. How naïve I’ve been. “I may just kill you, because if I can’t have you—” He pauses, using the back of his fingers to glide over my shoulder. “—They sure as fuck can’t.”
I don’t get a chance to ask who they are because adrenaline shoots through me. I dash toward the exit lights and shove myself through the doors, ignoring the alarms from behind. Kicking off my shoes, I don’t stop running until I see a clearing ahead that separates the football field and a thick forest. My eyes burn, and my hair whips my face as I pick up pace. My arms move back and forth as I jump over a fallen log, ripping my dress in the process. I will not stop running. Twigs bite at my feet the faster I run. Tears stream down my cheeks, and my hair, once in an elegant updo, is now a nest around my neck.
The times in his dark room where he’d make me hide until either of them found me seemed like a distant memory. They never would, though. I’d wait for hours until I eventually gave up and crawled out of my hole. No one would mention it. It became a weird concept that never made sense. What did it mean?
They can’t have you.
The final whisper of his words grows louder in my head before my foot collides with something hard, and the ground gets closer and closer. A sharp pain shoots through my side before everything goes black.
Chapter Nine
priest
year four
I’m no stranger to making hard decisions, and I’ve made many. All of them involve the passed out pet at my feet.
“Priest.” Vaden’s voice drifts from behind me. “Get her up. There’s another way around this.”
“You’re clouded by your emotions, Vade. The sooner that curse kicks in, the better.” I lean down, lifting the tear in her dress near her belly. An angry gash glows against the full moon.
I drop the fabric and roll my eyes.
“I get that you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, but three years. Three years she didn’t run, she didn’t complain, she didn’t so much as cry for her mommy and daddies. That’s gotta account for something.”
“It does. It accounts to her being alive and not thrown off Halen’s point like the rest of them.” No one said Luna was weak, because she was anything but.
“That’s not why she’s alive and you know it…” Vaden mouths back, and my shoulders tense. Gravel crunches beneath my boot when I slowly face my best friend.
“Priest?” Luna coughs from below, and we both turn back to her.
Vaden backs up. “I’ll go get the car.” Probably wise, considering I came close to breaking his legs.
“I told you not to get caught. You suck at this game.” I can’t keep the annoyance out of my tone.
“Please.”
My fingers curl around her neck to help her back up. “Please what, Madness? What are you begging for?”
She winces, pushing herself to a sitting position. Her eyes find mine, a stir of metal and lilac. “Don’t kill me.”
There’s always been one path I never tried, not only because I didn’t want to but because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did.
I catch her chin with my hand, burying my face into the crook of her neck. She's a florist full of flowers that bloom at midnight. A sweet reminder of everything I hate.
“Kiss me.”
I freeze, her words catching me off guard. She waits until her dying breath to finally flirt back. I'd laugh if it wasn't so... melancholic.
“Rabbit…” She’s not used that name since the first time she did all those years ago, and I pull back, resting my head against hers. “Kiss. Me.”
She fumbles with my belt. I have two options here. I could kill her once and for all and risk everything, or I could fuck her and risk doing the latter anyway.
I lift my hips a little, searching her eyes. “Or what, Madness?” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by her.
She doesn't back down. “Or nothing, because you’re going to fuck me.”
I bury my hand in the back of her hair and force her lips onto mine. I don’t know what I expected by kissing her, but it wasn’t this. Her tongue toyed with mine with gentle strokes, as if teasing what I could have had all along.
I lift her off the ground and place her on my lap, my hand running up her smooth skin and landing on the holster strapped around her thigh. “Too bad I never got to train you with these.”